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I'm buying at least one Sandtrooper, possibly up to three. Luke and Artoo are on the maybe list until I can actually see them in person. Maul is a pass.

I'll probably end up customizing at least one of the Sandtroopers with a dark wash to really bring out the details.

"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence… When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis

Wow, I can't believe how bad the R2-D2 turned out from prototype to production, 80% of the detail was lost in the process. The FB page has a comparison with a link to high res images. I am seriously disappointed. The prototype was easily worth the $20.

Wow, I can't believe how bad the R2-D2 turned out from prototype to production, 80% of the detail was lost in the process. The FB page has a comparison with a link to high res images. I am seriously disappointed. The prototype was easily worth the $20.

Yeah, that's brutal. Hasbro has taken an impressive sculpt and let the hacks in their Chinese factory turn it into a real piece of junk. You can see Hasbro's factory vendor simply has no idea how to render a higher-quality mold at all at any level, this literally could be a 3.75" scale figure with how shabby its lines are. Every single aspect of this thing, from materials to deco to sculpt, goes from a genius prototype to a piddling production model. If I were GG, I'd just pull out of this project altogether, having their name attached to product that much worse is going to make them look bad despite it being entirely on the vendor, which is Hasbro's responsibility.

Sculpt - woefully soft. A few finer details entirely cast out. Most likely this was lost during the tooling phase when the prototype was translated to tooling, but also could likely lost with cheap manufacturing procedures - pulling the plastic from the mold too early so it doesn't cool correctly - as well as too cheap a grade of ABS plastic used.

Deco - sloppy masking is largely to blame here, this needed fine attention and instead got crammed into a cheap copper mask to get messy edges and underpainted segments. Not taking more care with paint over the silver dome matching the body leads to a mismatch on the blue despite likely being the same exact paint. Also using a cheap ABS plastic with its inaccurate bald white color robs from the detail that is there, as well as just torpedoing the overall look. The only saving grace is the silver on the dome.

So where is the money going on these? Where is the $20 quality compared to $15 with Marvel Legends and DC Universe and $20 with Masters of the Universe? Why go to the trouble of producing higher-quality prototypes meant to appeal to collectors if you're not going to take the time to actually follow through on them?

If this is the production ethic to be expected on this line, then it's already dead. All the hard work put into design is thrown out the window by cheap crap production, leading to a line that should look like a real improvement in quality instead becoming an uninspiring upsized version of the 3.75" line.

Darth Vader is becoming the Mickey Mouse of Star Wars.

"In Brooklyn, a castle, is where dwell I"

The use of a lightsaber does not make one a Jedi, it is the ability to not use it.

Wow.... you mean a hand painted prototype with tons of dry brushing to accentuate detail doesn't match the production version? Shock and awe. Anyone who has collected toys for any length of time should be used to that. It's called reality. The only problem with the production R2-D2 is the fact he's a bit too small.

Also, the in-hand images are way better than that shoddy comparison photo you linked to, JT.

And mentioning MOTU is laughable. Given the extensive mold reuse of that line.

Marvel Legends and DC Universe also utilizes a lot of buck bodies and painted details.

Sure. R2-D2 looks pretty good for $20. Considering all the added tools and accessories. Do I wish he was a tiny bit taller? Sure. Or that they included the Bar Accessory? Absolutely. But that's the only serious problem that I have with the figure. A smaller figure like R2-D2 in a wave usually means they spent extra funds on another figure in the wave. Judging by the awesome sauce Sandtrooper and all his accessories... I feel that is the case here as well.

Also anyone who waggles the finger at Hasbro over this and feels bad for Gentle Giant needs to get over the Hasbro Hate. As Gentle Giant certainly is not perfect either. Their line of upscaled vintage figures proves that.

For me, to justify doubling the price of the figures, they need to do a little more than scaling them up by 60% and maybe adding a couple of joints or accessories. Aside from a couple of high-demand characters, most of the larger scale figures I see in the $20 range rot on shelves for ages, and I'm not seeing anything here that would set the Black Series apart. There's the increase recognition and appeal of Star Wars, but, then again, we've been flooded for almost two decades with the characters we're getting in the Black Series.

While it does appear that the R2-D2 sculpt has been revised since the prototype - including putting the legs on correctly and fixing the bulging doors, which nobody is giving Hasbro credit for fixing - it also looks much better in these shots than it does in the solicitation photo. In that photo, with its completely flat, bright lighting, the blue panels are removed from his legs, making the whole thing look weird. It also appears that the prototype's panels were painted (in addition to being sculpted) while on the final product they are not. Sure there are some problems, but people should judge them by better photos first. Coincidentally, many of the photos I've seen have R2's middle leg out too far, exposing the thick mechanism that's presumably supposed to be hidden. While everyone else seems to be losing faith over these based on the new photos, I'm actually getting more excited for them since now I know what to actually expect.